Texas Republicans Sue Lawyer For Failing To Prove Elections That Were Not Rigged Were Rigged

Promises, promises.

The Republican Party of Texas has filed a lawsuit against a lawyer they claim tricked 17 former candidates into believing that she could prove that there was voter suppression in Harris County (where Houston is) and that they actually won elections they had lost.

This is, of course, one of the known difficulties with starting with a ridiculous conclusion and then working backwards.

In actual fact, voter turnout was so great in Harris County in 2022 that they actually ran out of paper ballots for a period of time at 20 locations (though Republicans claimed 29 locations). Voters who were in line at these locations were told they could try to go to another location or stay there until more ballots arrived. In Harris County, they have a countywide voting system, so voters could cast their ballots at any of the other 782 polling locations in the county.

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Was this good? Obviously not. Clearly, they should have been more prepared. However, the state Republican Party and many of their candidates claimed that this was somehow done on purpose and that Republican voters had been targeted for suppression in particular, because 55 percent of the 29 polling places the Republicans included were in counties that went to Donald Trump — which makes it sound like the kind of thing that might be really difficult to do on purpose, without magic.

But then a hero came along. A hero named Elizabeth Alvarez, who told 17 of these Republican candidates that she had a system and could prove that the elections were intentionally rigged against them.

From the lawsuit:

Alvarez’s representations of particular importance and influence included:

(1) her firm had prepared a reliable “data model” with the assistance of a data “expert” which is showing that more than 40,000 voters were suppressed;

(2) the “data model” complied with U.S. Department of Justice guidelines for voter suppression;

(3) election contests are expedited and must be completed within forty-five days of filing per the election law statute that Ms. Alvarez herself authored as a legal advisor to the Texas House of Representatives Committee on Elections in the 87th Legislature;

(4) Defendants possessed a high degree of expertise and experience in election litigation;

(5) Defendants would complete discovery, motion practice, and trial within an agreed upon fixed budget.

But then she swindled them! Swindled them all by claiming that she could prove a thing they had to have known they were lying about, because no way were there 40,000 missed votes when the vast majority of polling places only had like 150 to 500 voters for the whole day. One of the busiest Republican polling places (which did not suffer from a paper shortage) had 1728 voters for the day. So, 1728 times 16 — the number of Republican polling places the Republicans claim ran out of paper — is 27,648, so 40,000 is clearly something of a stretch when one considers that most of the places only ran out of paper for like an hour.

But wait, it gets funnier:

Seventeen former Republican candidates in the Election, presumptively based on the same representations, retained Defendants to file election contests on any other day than January 6, 2023. Nonetheless, Defendants filed the bulk of the election contests on January 6, and very shortly thereafter exceeded the agreed upon budget.

Eleven months later and well past the forty-five day “statutory” timeline, each of Alvarez’s representations proved to be absolutely false. The “data model” Defendants sold Plaintiff and the seventeen former Republican candidates never existed and Defendants were not able to put forth even a scintilla of evidence in responding to a no evidence motion for summary judgment. Ultimately, Defendants’ inability to substantively respond to the no evidence motions for summary judgment resulted in each of their remaining clients’ shameful defeat.

On top of that, she never helped them form a marching band, she wasn’t even a real Nigerian prince and the Fiji mermaid she promised would testify on their behalf was just a monkey and a fish sewn together. At least they’ve still got that land in Florida she sold them.

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For her part, Alvarez claims that only the state Republicans are upset about the results. “Our clients were all happy with our representation,” she told the Houston Chronicle. “I guess no good deed goes unpunished.” She also says that she never promised them a rose garden data model and that she had no choice but to file them on January 6 in some cases, as that was the deadline.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said in a statement that the lawsuit itself is proof that Republicans’ claims were always frivolous and that “the only new revelation here is that a bunch of aspiring judges didn’t understand that their own legal theories were science fiction,” which is hilarious.

The moral of this story is that it is generally a bad idea to believe your own bullshit to the degree that you actually give money to someone to prove it is true.

(Houston Chronicle)